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Presentations & Biographies
Presentations
Panel Discussions
- Preparing students for graduate and professional school.
- Learning Communities: How can faculty effectively use them to support student learning.
- Continuing and ongoing assessment
Abstracts
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Engaging Students in Learning
For many people, the mind is conceived of as a recording device. They believe that events happen and they are registered into memory as if by a video camera or tape recorder. In fact, the part of the mind that is used to learn in the classroom is largely organized by meaning. Information can only be accessed if it means something to the learner. For learning to take place, a connection needs to be made from the learners’ existing knowledge to the new information. This occurs rarely, if ever, when students fall into “recording” mode. In this talk, I discuss technological as well as non-technological means for engaging students in learning. I address how student response devices can be used to engage students in learning through preview and survey questions, in-class experiments, and conceptual questions about recently learned materials.
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Transforming Education, or Transformative Education?
Though education has always been under the national microscope, over the past decade it has been subject to even greater scrutiny as stakeholders have adopted a mantra of holding systems accountable in measurable ways for the dollars invested in operating schools. Most recently, mathematics and science education have received particular attention as a means of keeping America globally competitive. This talk will review what this increased vigilance has wrought for K-12 systems and their students, and how it is likely to lead to demands that institutions of higher education demonstrate value added in the learning experience for students. However, the ongoing efforts to monitor education do not have to be restrictive, especially if we inform them with a knowledge of how people learn, offer experiences that transform students into learners motivated by curiosity, and implement assessments that present students with a variety of ways to demonstrate their learning. The speaker will highlight ways that K-12 and higher education systems need to work together as part of a single system that builds on a shared understanding of what it means to teach and learn across the K-16 spectrum.
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Cloning the Professor: an Alternative to Poor Teaching in a Large Course
What kind of imaginative pedagogy maximizes student access to what a teacher does best in producing genuine understanding? Rather than a presenter of information, the instructor becomes a coach: a designer of learning strategies, a corrector of misconceptions, a source of immediate feedback, and an encourager. Methods for fulfilling these ideals in large-enrollment (more than 100 students) courses will be simulated and discussed. Examples include creative formative assessments, elaborative questioning, cooperative learning, and innovative use of teaching assistants. This design imposes a new set of student responsibilities; these will be explored. Benefits include enhanced student motivation from a sense of personal connection to the instructor; elevated student confidence, affect and self-awareness; and improved performance. In preparation for this session workshop, the presenters ask you to read the attached pages from a cell biology textbook. The places to begin and end the reading are marked with a PDF note. This activity will optimize the benefit from participation in these sessions.
Click here to download.
Web based strategies to enhance student engagement which can lead to more diverse students entering graduate school
San Diego State University has a large (35,000) diversified student body but graduates low numbers of students who pursue biomedical research careers. A novel web-based/lecture approach is used to teach Biology to non-science majors with the goal of generating the excitement and promise of biomedical careers.
Using a proprietary web based educational assessment system, BioEspresso, and ten postdoctoral fellows from a joint SDSU/UCSD program called IRACDA, Dr. Pozos coordinates and co-teaches two sections (500 to 750 students/semester) of a Biology class for non-sciences majors. The course has web-based MWF assignments with required questions.
Analysis of the class indicate the following: 1. The MWF module assessment schedule promotes learning and minimizes cramming; 2. Completing the module before lecture minimizes extensive note taking and allows faculty to present integrated concepts; 3. Learning Objective Maps (LOM) are effective in guiding the postdoctoral fellows and the students; and 4. Email correspondence between the students and faculty minimizes the sense of isolation in these large classes
The students claim that they have learned new concepts in biology and enjoy the web-based/lecture model.
Predicting Transition and Adjustment to College: Minority Science Students' First Year of College
National results will be presented from a longitudinal study of minority and non-minority students in the sciences. The study focuses on experiences in the first year that predict successful academic adjustment and sense of belonging in college, extending current models in retention.
Presenter Biographies
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James E. Hamos, Ph.D.
James Hamos received his doctorate in neuroanatomy at the Ohio State University, writing his dissertation on questions of synaptic circuitry in the nervous system. After completing postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he was recruited to the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1986 to apply techniques of cell biology to the study of Alzheimer’s disease. Ultimately, Hamos’ work on Alzheimer’s disease, especially in education and outreach efforts to families and the larger public, brought him into discussions of science literacy and illiteracy, and to local, state and national issues in mathematics and science education. In 1993, the Chancellor of the Medical School asked him to create an Office of Science Education, an outreach endeavor that now involves thousands of students and teachers yearly. From his Medical School positions, Hamos became intimately involved with Education Reform initiatives in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and also directed the Massachusetts Academy of Mathematics and Science, the state’s only specialized high school. For two years, Hamos held a joint appointment in the University of Massachusetts President’s Office where he worked to construct K-16 linkages in the Commonwealth. Most recently, in 2002, Hamos accepted a role as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation where he now helps manage a broad national portfolio of projects in the Foundation’s Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program.
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Michael Erickson, Ph.D.
Dr. Erickson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at UCR. He received his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1998. He then completed post-doctoral training with Lynne M. Reder and James L. McClelland at Carnegie Mellon University. Following this training, Dr. Erickson came to UCR in 2002. His research examines how people acquire new information—especially over short time-spans. He is interested in interactions between learning, memory, and attention. Dr. Erickson teaches a wide variety courses in the Department of Psychology. At the undergraduate level, these range from Introductory Psychology to upper-division courses such as Cognitive Processes, Human Factors, and Mathematical and Computational Models in Cognitive Science. At the graduate level, he teaches Design and Analysis in Cognitive Science, as well as other quantitative courses, and seminars on topics such as Category Learning and Working Memory. He received the 2004–2005 Professor of the Year award from the Department of Psychology, the 2005–2006 Teaching Award from the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at UCR, and the 2005–2006 Innovative Teaching Award from the UCR Academy of Distinguished Teachers.
John Bell, Ph.D.
John D. Bell was raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. He received his bachelor’s degree in Zoology from Brigham Young University in 1982, and his Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of California, San Diego in 1987. From 1987-1990 he held a post doctoral position with the University of Virginia. In 1990 he returned to BYU where he has taught introductory biology, physiology, pharmacology, biophysics, and cell biology. He served as Chair of the Zoology department from 1998 to 2001. In October of 2001 he was asked to serve as Associate Dean in the College of Biology and Agriculture where he remains at this time. Dr. Bell’s research is split between educational research and traditional laboratory work focused on the biophysics of membrane structure and lipid-protein interactions. His general interest of research is in the molecular mechanisms of hormone signal transduction. He is the author of 46 articles and 40 abstracts. He and his wife Rhonda are the parents of three sons and two foster daughters.
Bill Bradshaw, Ph.D.
Bill Bradshaw was born and educated in Salt Lake City, Utah. He received his bachelor’s degree in Biology from Harvard in 1963, and his Ph.D in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois in 1968. He held a post doctoral fellowship with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Oak Ridge, Tennessee from 1968-1970. He has taught courses in introductory biology, molecular biology and cell biology at BYU since 1974. He served there for a period of four years as Associate Dean of the Honors program. He and his students have conducted research in developmental biology, developmental toxicology, and regulation of gene expression. Most recently he has investigated issues relative to teaching analytical thinking skills to undergraduate students. He has authored 42 articles and 20 abstracts. He and his wife Marge are the parents of four sons and a daughter.
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Robert S. Pozos, Ph.D.
Dr. Bob Pozos has developed and implemented training programs for both undergraduate/graduate students to enter biomedical careers (Ph.D./ M.D.). At the University of Minnesota, School of Medicine. Duluth Minnesota he developed computer based systems for medical students and educational outreach programs to Native Americans. More recently he teaches large classes (500-750 students) of non-science majors using a his proprietary web-based system, BioEspresso. He has directed federal research/educational programs for undergraduates (e.g. MBRS, MARC, McNair, MHIRT) as well as PREP that bridges the undergraduate–graduate pipeline culminating in IRACDA which prepares post-doctoral students for Research/Training careers. He uses BioEspresso to conduct research into the effectiveness of various educational approaches for non-science majors and to promote student interest into the biological sciences and biomedical careers. As a professor at SDSU, he has received the 2006 Outstanding Faculty Award presented by the SDSU student body. Dr. Pozos’ current research interests are the metabolic demands of human exercise as well as physiological responses in extreme environments. He has written extensively about hypothermia and has been funded by NIH, DOD and industry. His present studies use Near Infrared Spectroscopy to quantify the amount of oxygen bound to hemoglobin in muscle tissue under different physiological conditions.
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Sylvia Hurtado, UCLA
Sylvia Hurtado is Professor and Director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA in the Graduate School of Education and Information Sciences. Just prior to coming to UCLA, she served as Director of the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education at the University of Michigan. Dr. Hurtado has published numerous articles and books related to her primary interest in student educational outcomes, campus climates, college impact on student development, and diversity in higher education. She has served on numerous editorial boards for journals in education and served on the boards for the American Association of Higher Education (AAHE), the Higher Learning Commission and is president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE). Black Issues In Higher Education named her among the top 15 influential faculty whose work has had an impact on the academy. She obtained her Ph.D. in Education from UCLA, Ed.M. from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and A.B. from Princeton University in Sociology.
Dr. Hurtado has coordinated several national research projects, including a U.S. Department of Education-sponsored project on how colleges are preparing students to achieve the cognitive, social, and democratic skills to participate in a diverse democracy. She is launching a National Institutes of Health project on the preparation of underrepresented students for biomedical and behavioral science research careers. She has also studied assessment, reform, and innovation in undergraduate education on a project through the National Center for Postsecondary Improvement.
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Center for Visual Computing